


be brave

by delicateloser



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, Fluff, M/M, light angst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 03:30:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15476697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicateloser/pseuds/delicateloser
Summary: short stanlon piece inspired by the song "be brave" by owl city.





	be brave

**Author's Note:**

> (please [listen to the song](https://open.spotify.com/track/7cKRACUyo4hvEXSbbGs6G7?si=-356o9xUSvePPbLt1uUxEA) while you read! makes the experience better!!)

**S** tan had, what he liked to think, was the perfect life. Patty was wonderful. Everything he could have ever asked for when it came to a wife, a companion, a life partner; hopefully soon the mother of his children as well. They’d been trying for a long time to have a baby. And while circumstances regarding fertility weren’t ideal, they really believed it could happen. They were still young. Only in their early thirties, now.  
  
But it was only recently that Stan began to feel as though there was something else. Some piece of his life that was missing. This was not a lack of love for Patty, absolutely not. No, it was more of a strange sort of longing. A feeling that there had been someone else at some point in time that he couldn’t quite remember. A specific draw in his heart toward a single other person, who’s name and face he could never place for the life of him.  
  
And when he was out and about, getting errands done, stopping at the store to and from work, he would occasionally see something that struck familiarity. He would feel as though his heart would begin to race and ache. This wasn’t often. But it had happened enough to take notice.  
  
That nameless, faceless person would feel closer to him in those moments, somehow. He would push it from his mind of course, and force himself to be rational. There was nothing to be done about someone he had never even seen or met before in his life.  
  
Weeks would pass in between, but when it had been a month, Stan would find himself on edge, almost desperate from the waiting.  
  
After one particular stressful and difficult week of work, Patty suggested the theater. They hadn’t been in a while. She could sense Stan’s tension. They picked out a movie, hopped in the car, and arrived right on time for the previews to begin. He held her hand, listening to her soft comments with fondness.  
  
But it was then that he felt it, again. The tug, the racing of his heart. The desperate yearning for something — no, some _one_. And they were here tonight. He felt them. He gripped Patty’s hand anxiously. She commented to say he was squeezing very tightly.  
  
“ _Are you okay?_ ”  
  
But her words fell on deaf ears. There, heading toward the exit, a silhouette of a person had drawn his gaze. And just before they disappeared completely, they looked directly at him, and smiled. It was so bright, so blinding, it felt as though it had lit up the dark theater around them.  
  
He was vaguely aware of his own lips moving, telling his wife he would be right back. Stan had risen to his feet, compelled by something he didn’t understand, and he was following a stranger into the movie theater lobby. He reached the end of the hall just as the man was pushing the door to the exit open.  
  
“Hey!” He called out, and it felt now like his heart may pound out of his chest. His feet took him out to the parking lot, where the stranger finally stopped, halting Stan in his tracks.  
  
He turned, and began to take cautious steps toward him.  
  
Stan watched him, and as silly as it sounded, he felt something then in his gut. Like the kind of funny feeling you get the most with a first love. With a first kiss.  
  
“Please.” Stan said softly, “I want to know your name.” He had to. He had to know who this man was, and why he couldn’t stop thinking about him. Why he felt him everywhere. Why he simultaneously felt butterflies and heartache for a stranger he was almost certain he had never even seen before.  
  
And the man smiled again, a soft laugh escaping his lips. It was a simple action, but it made the butterflies go wild. The distance between them closed, and something was placed in his palm, those lips barely brushing his cheek. A feeling of comfort and nostalgia washed over him.  
  
Then the man was stepping away from him, taking the feeling with him, and Stan felt tears spring to his eyes. Again he didn’t know why.  
  
“Please,” he managed to say again, his voice cracking in a way it hadn’t in years.  
  
“Take care of yourself, Stan.”  
  
And his gaze dropped, then, to the small object in his hand, a few stray tears staining the paper. An origami bird. And written along the bottom, in handwriting that was both familiar and foreign all at once, the words “be brave.”  


* * *

 

  
**M** ike Hanlon had remained in Derry. He had never forgotten his friends, or the terrible things that had happened that summer.  
  
And he had also never forgotten the first, and most true love of his life, Stanley Uris. Or how afraid Stan was back then. And how Mike promised he would never stop being there for him, and protecting him, from anything that made Stan feel afraid.  
  
Stan didn’t remember him or that promise anymore. He was married, now, and very happy. Had Mike allowed himself to go elsewhere, he may have been able to make himself happy, too.  
  
But Mike had to return home to Derry. Because he didn’t want to ever forget the boy with curly blonde hair, and a radiant smile, who spent all those years naming birds and counting stars with him at the farm. Who’s view of the world was so vastly different than anyone Mike had met before. Who’s jokes made no sense, but were more than worth how the boy would laugh in the most beautiful way, while their friends tried to make heads or tails of the statement.  
  
And sometimes, it felt scary to be alone with all those memories. Lonely. And as Mike leaned against the hood of his truck just outside of his small home town, staring up at the stars, tears rolled down his cheeks. And he reminded himself that he had to be brave too.


End file.
